


zero sum

by koedeza



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Gore, Horror, Nasty shit, an attempt at horror at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-14 23:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21023906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koedeza/pseuds/koedeza
Summary: The Winchesters have always been hunters. Monsters and demons, they know them almost as well as they know themselves. It's telling, really.





	zero sum

**Author's Note:**

> sick

**1.**

Cohen never got an education past the 7th grade.

He also never thought of himself as dumb. He couldn’t do algebra, but he knew things about life that you couldn't learn in a classroom. He knew that from the moment you were made, there was something innately in you that no one could take away. You could steal and kill and hurt and break but you would always be able to rely on the thing you had deep down. Cohen never forgot that. So even when the snow crunched underneath his feet and pine needles bristled against his coat, he relied on the only thing he’d ever trusted.

Instinct. 

There was the flash-bang of a gun, the sound of feet sliding on wet snow and the blur of another person, all of it right before a fist connected with Cohen’s face. He stumbled back into the snow, holding a hand to his nose, trying desperately to blink the cold tears out of his eyes so he could see who was attacking him. 

He didn’t need to know why.

A smile that once had easily torn across Cohen’s face now faltered, but he didn’t forget his instinct. Or, he tried, but his body wasn’t responding to him. His arms moved slowly as they landed a punch on the attacker, and though he could see it had hurt them, it wasn’t like his usual punches. His usual punches tended to break bones.

“What did you do to me?” Cohen gasped and fumbled as he went for another punch. His attacker dodged and skidded across the snow behind him. He should have seen the arm that locked around his neck coming, but none of his senses wanted to calibrate. It was like that initial punch had thrown him completely off, and now he was being thrown to the ground, arms held tight against his chest and neck. 

“What did you do to me, fucker?” Cohen growled at the attacker, his body squirming under the tight hold. He couldn’t breathe. 

“I injected you with human blood.” A voice came from above, raspy but unnervingly gentle. “Hey,” The attacker breathed close to his ear, tightening the sleeper hold they had on Cohen. “It’ll all be okay.” 

“Like hell, it will,” Cohen tried to get a better grip on the man’s arms, his feet skidding in the snow. “I am going to take you apart piece by piece and enjoy every single bite of meat I rip off your corpse—Better yet, I’ll do it while you’re still alive.”

They were empty threats, but he couldn’t keep them from tumbling out of his mouth.

The air was too quiet, opaque puffs of cold air materializing above him. 

“No, you won’t. You’re not going to kill anyone else.” The man said. It should have sounded like a threat. Why didn’t it sound like he was being threatened? This was the part where someone pressed a gun against his head, dug claws deep into his throat and ripped his trachea out. 

“I’m sorry about punching you, that wasn’t my intention. I just needed to find a way to get the syringe in,” The man explained. “I...I don’t want to hurt you.”

Cohen was finding all of it too ironic to be funny. 

“Why do you want to kill me?” Cohen asked. He thought he hadn’t needed to know, but somehow the words were slipping out. He blamed the human blood, hating how his thoughts became slow and jumbled in his head.

“There’s been ten deaths in the last month. They were all you.” The words lacked conviction as if the person attacking him was hesitant to place the blame on Cohen for anything.

“You don’t understand,” Cohen squirmed, his eyes filling with water. What the fuck is happening to me? The sky was a bright winter grey and it burned to look at, but he couldn’t turn his gaze. “I was eating the already dead ones, and only the dead ones—”

He shouldn’t have had to try and justify himself, he didn’t want to try and justify himself.

“Cohen, we both know that’s not true,” The voice only got gentler, dropping in decibels. Cohen was too drowsy to understand how the man even knew his name.

“I checked and you had options. There were graves and mourges that you could have gone to. You didn’t need to take the ones that were alive.” He said slowly.

Cohen felt his eyes bulging from lack of air. If he just got the chance to explain himself, the other man would understand. They all would. “It’s an addiction. Just like humans have drug addictions, I… I got addicted to the taste of the living. But then I stopped that shit, I promise. Why do you think I’m here?” Cohen lied. He’d been in the woods to find a lonely deer hunter, or a fisherman down along the river. Whoever came up along his path, they were going to be Cohen’s next meal. 

The man said nothing, so he tried again.

“You would never understand what it’s like to feel so… so satiated.” By that point the tears were running down his face, freezing in the cold as if his body could no longer run warm. 

Well, it never had been his body.

“I understand perfectly.” The man said quietly. Cohen imagined his eyes were closed. “So I need you to understand that I have to do this and that I am going to make it as painless as possible.” There was a pause. “There’s always something beyond, I promise.” 

“Please,” Cohen had stopped moving. “I can fucking change, I can be better than that. I won’t kill anymore.” He pleaded, his voice fracturing into a whine. Maybe if he got out of this alive, he would change. Maybe he could. “Show me.” He’d started to beg. “Show me how.”

There was a moment of hesitation. 

“Cohen, we can try, but we’ll never change.” The man shifted, then there was an oddly comforting pressure on the side of Cohen’s neck. 

That was the last thing he heard as the sky got greyer, darkening until everything was shrouded in shadow. 

**2.**

Somewhere else, shadows were being interrupted by rain. Rain, and red lights and screaming.

“Help! Help me, please!” 

At the end of an alley, dumped right outside of a bar, a man was writhing on wet pavement. His wrists and ankles had been tied to a gas pipe, and at some point, his mouth had been covered with duct tape. He’d managed to wiggle that off when the rain came, and now he was screaming for help.

“Please, anyone! Help me!” 

Winchester’s screams were loud, but the music leaking from inside the bar and the thunder from the storm was louder. He doubted anyone could hear him and given the types of people residing inside the bar if anyone had heard him, they wouldn’t give two shits. He only had one hope, and that came in the form of the guy taking out the trash. 

When the guy came out and saw Winchester, he immediately dropped the bags to help.

“Oh my god, what happened?” The guy started peeling the tape off of Winchester’s wrists. Winchester seethed. 

The guy was good, but he was better.

“I was in the bar, having a drink, and the next thing I know I wake up here.” Winchester felt as the man stopped taking the tape off. 

A moment's hesitation. 

“Maybe your drink was spiked?” The man stuttered, his complete lack of surprise only made worse by his obvious inability to hide it.

“This is your bar.” Winchester’s smile was hidden by the dark. “Seems to me you should be a helluva lot more concerned by what’s going on in there.”

Ripping his hands out of the remaining electrical tape was easy, grabbing the Djinn’s hair and slamming his head against the pipe even easier. All of it came from muscle memory. While the Djinn crumpled back into the heap of trash bags, Winchester ripped the tape off his ankles and stood up, shaking his limbs out. 

“Holy fuck.” He rubbed at his wrists and watched as the Djinn stirred on the ground. “Took you long enough. I had to sit, in the rain, tied to a fucking pipe. That’s no way to treat your customers, now is it?”

The Djinn was awake now, eyes glowing from the reflected neon light of the bar. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice was indignant but he looked exactly like Winchester liked them to look. 

Like they were about to die.

“Let me get this straight.” Winchester ambled in the rain, knowing that the Djinn wouldn’t dare get up. Over the course of three different cocktails, Dean had studied him, figuring out that the Djinn rather run that get caught in a confrontation.  
“You take the hookers and pimps and gamblers and you feed off of their blood. Then when you let them leave, they spread the word about how great they think your bar is. How all their impossible dreams came true! More people, more blood, and it all turns into a vicious cycle. Is that about right?”

“No one’s ever died. No one’s ever become a missing persons case!” Now the Djinn was grasping at straws. “Everyone leaves happy, ask them yourself.” 

“Have you ever heard of Murphy’s law?’” Dean asked.

“What?” The Djinn bleated.

“I don’t do technicalities. In fact, the way I do things is the opposite of methodical. You should be happy, because I’m a little drunk right now.” That was his first lie of the night. He was always a little drunk. Winchester wiped a little spit from the corner of his mouth with the heel of his hand. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.” 

“What do you want? I can offer you anything you’d like, as much money as you want! Just please, don’t kill me.” The Djinn tried to get up, hands held in front of him as if he were praying.

Winchester didn’t care much for God.

He kicked the Djinn in the chest and sent him sprawling back down. Then he crouched and pressed a knee into the monster, his other foot pressed roughly against his neck.

The second lie came easy.

“There is fucking and there is booze and there is eventual death to look forward to,” Winchester smiled, kneeling down further on the Djinn. “I don’t want anything from you.”

He hadn’t bothered to learn who the Djinn was or where it was from, gave a rat’s ass about its motives. Only knew that it needed killing and if Winchester had a specialty that was it. He carefully pulled out a knife, one that flaked red. 

“You don’t have to do this.” The Djinn’s voice trembled, it's dark eyes glistening. 

Winchester tucked the knife back into its sheath. “Just for that comment, I’m taking away your knife rights. You’re not allowed to be cheesy.” 

“Good luck killing a Djinn without a knife,” A woman’s voice called from the mouth of the alley. Winchester immediately recognized the snarky comment. He hated snark.

The monster under the hunter began to mumble in relief, almost shaking with it. That was until the corners of Winchester's mouth kicked up in a smile and his eyes glinted neon. The drizzle was quickly turning into sheets of freezing rain, but it wouldn’t make the job any harder. In fact, now he had an audience. 

“There’s more than one way to kill just about anything,” He called out, loud enough for the woman to hear. 

“Show me,” The shadows called back.

Winchester released his knee on the Djinn’s chest and stood up, taking a moment to look at its face. If he squinted through the rain he could almost see...gratitude. 

That was when Winchester brought his leg up and slammed it down on the Djinn’s head. 

Again, and again, and again, until the rain mixed with the blood and brain matter and little fragments of hair and bone. He only stopped once he was sure he was stepping on a puddle. Winchester stepped back and ran a hand through his wet hair, not a hint of a smile on his face. The neon light made everything look like a cartoon, too well defined and very, very colored.

Psycho, directed by Winchester, featuring the dreaded Djinn. He laughed at the idiocy of his joke then composed himself. He had to be professional.

He walked out of the alley with long strides, shaking out his hands as he went. The woman from the shadows was standing behind his Impala. She casually glanced over at the mess Winchester had made, eyes glossing over the globs of brain matter that slid down the pipes. It looked like something that belonged in the Moma. 

“People told me what you could do. Warned me, actually.” She tucked a strand of golden hair behind her ear and stuck her hands in the pockets of her trench coat. Even in the dark, the piece looked expensive. Everything about the girl said money and sophistication in a sultry British accent. “I don’t know whether I should be alarmed or pleased.” 

He put his elbows on the roof of the car and leaned forward, extending a hand for her to shake. “I’m Dean. Dean Winchester.”

“I know. What about the body?” Her voice stayed casual, but Dean knew that worried breath of air. She was someone scared of being caught, someone, who knew what they had to lose.

“Sweetheart,” Winchester’s laugh didn’t have any humor to it. “You can try, but you won’t recognize shit.” 

Bela Talbot looked at him with her perfect blue eyes and steely grin, then slid into the car without saying another word. He didn’t quite remember if he’d locked it or not. He glanced at the alley behind him and set his mouth in a grim line, satisfied with the night’s work. 

What he did often made him slightly nauseous, not because of the blood and the bone and the way the idea of ending lives settled under his skin. That day he felt more weirded out by what he’d told the Djinn rather than what he’d done. He never lied to monsters because his words were always the last they’d hear, but he’d lied today. 

Dean recognized the song drifting out from the bar and hummed along as he got in the car.

“I'm gonna do what I want, and I'm gonna get paid,” 

“Do what I want, and I'm gonna get paid,” 

**3.**

He counted backward in his head.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 5—

When he fucked up on the 5, he pulled a bottle of Jose Cuervo away from his lips, tempted to ignore his own rules for the burn of the drink.

Sam Winchester breathed heavily and stood up, eyes on the drawn curtain and the door. He bent down and picked up the newspaper from the dirty carpet, flapping it back open. 

Cohen’s ashes seemed to stare at him from the urn in the corner of the room.

Tequila sloshed in his otherwise empty stomach as he lay his eyes on the newspaper. He knew what would follow. The feeling of bugs crawling up and down his spine, the feeling that his eyes were never closed and that every hour after a kill they turn more and more into shrink-wrap, everything glossy and tight. Maybe in an hour or two he’d throw up, scratch his skin until it bled. The whole room felt like it was getting smaller and smaller each time his eyes flicked to the urn. Sam swallowed dryly out of reflex and told himself these feelings were only normal.

Nothing quite felt like the black-out hours after a hunt.

-x-

Sam waited in line for the ATM and looked back at the newspaper again.

A terrible itch covered every inch of him, and when he looked down each scar on his skin bulged like it was alive.

He just needed the money. He’d buy more bullets, he’d jack the next car, he’d hit the next city. Let someone else go, let someone else go, let someone else go. He’d make his own vicious cycle, if that’s what it took. 

Just as his phone rang, his skin started to sting, just like his veins always did. 

“Hello?” 

A rough, familiar voice on the other end of the line. “Sam? That you?” 

“Bobby? Yeah, it’s Sam. I-”

He wanted to say he was busy dealing with a kind of infestation. He could never tell whether Bobby understood what he was trying to say. 

“I’m working a hunt?” Sam bit his lip, closed his eyes. Waited for the silent scorn.

“You’re working one or you just finished?” Bobby’s voice was crackling static over the phone. “You sound rough, Sam. Remember I told you to take your fucking time between hunts.”

Bobby did not seem to understand the fragile concept of time after a hunt.

Sam didn’t say anything, he just fixed his eyes on an open cut on his palm. The skin moved and rippled as if something had just crawled in.

Bobby sighed through the line. “There’s a woman and her child over in Montana. Kitsune from the looks of it. The kid is young, so I’d like it if you could take care of this one.”

If Sam pretended that his job was anything else, that would be a compliment. Instead, he went for a question.

“And if it wasn’t me taking care of it? Who else is on their tail?” 

With Bobby, you could always count on zero bullshit. “Dean. The other Winchester” 

Sam looked down at his scuffed-up sneakers, pretended he didn’t see the rust-colored splotches of dried blood. He was 100% sure the blood was his, but it didn’t help to quiet the thrum in his veins. There was no one at the ATM, but it felt like the whole world was waiting on an answer.

“Sam?” Bobby’s voice faded in and out.

He swallowed. His ledger was getting dark, things were growing dim. 

“Yeah. Yes, I’ll take care of it.” 

**4.**

Dean stared at the meat sack hanging from the hook, eyes a little too wide. 

The body was completely torn to shreds. One arm was missing, probably caught on a pothole and ripped off somewhere along the road. The scalp was mostly gone, and Dean didn’t see any of the original red hair, only the white bone of the skull. He wrinkled his nose and kicked the body over, assessing the front. The face was gone alright, unless you counted the mangled shreds that used to be eyeballs.

His phone rang. 

He quickly blinked then went back to the lazy half-lidded stare he was used to, letting go of much tension as he could. Someone had once told him to breathe, and often it felt like his body forgot how.

“Dean Winchester.” He could feel Bela Talbot grinning from the other end of the line. “Are you busy?” Her accent was cute, her question not so much.

“Just finished.” He knew what she was going to ask. “I need to unhook some... cargo from the ‘pala, but I can get that done quickly.” Now Dean was smiling too. Her enthusiasm was contagious. “Where do you want to meet?”

“How about that motel off of 96?” 

-x-

Dean Winchester understood the efficiency and draw of separating work and play. He’d just never been good at resisting temptation.

“How about another round?” Bela’s lazy, rough after-sex voice was hot. Hot enough that Dean wanted to get back into bed with her and waste a few more hours. 

He stared at himself in the mirror, turned his chin to see every angle of himself in the shitty bathroom light. He would never understand why when Bela had a mansion, and gorgeous cars and access to anywhere in the world… She chose to fuck in the seedy motels. Anonymity, he guessed, but it threw him off every time he woke up in scratchy sheets next to her. Usually, when he woke up in those, it was alone.

When he turned back to the mirror, he was greeted by his smiling reflection. Despite the jarring green silhouette that came from the neon light outside, he looked good. Considering his line of work, it wasn’t easy to be all there but here he was, living proof of a job done right. 

“Dean? Come on,” Bela drawled. “You don’t have to leave for another few hours, do you? It’s been, like, a month since we fucked properly.” 

He huffed out a laugh, flicked off the bathroom light and climbed back into bed with her. She moved closer to him, tucking her head in between his jaw and chest.  
“Bela, I have a job.” He said lazily, eyes fixed on the ceiling instead of her. “I know you like stealing from people, but I gotta work for my money.” 

Bela scoffed, and he didn’t need to look at her to see the calculated disdain on her face. 

“Baby, you steal lives. How is that any different?” 

Dean froze for a second, uncomfortable with the strangeness of the question.

“Let’s just-” He struggled to shake what she said from his head, focusing instead on the distractions at hand. “Let’s just fuck, and get this over with.” 

**5.**

Midnight in Montana.

The very edge of day and night. 

One Winchester lurked in the shadows, a knife pressed against his heart to keep it from beating out of his chest. 

One Winchester ambled down the motel walkway far too loudly. He didn’t care if he was seen or heard.

They got closer and closer and closer until they were both right in front of a room marked #8 in peeling golden letters. Their timing was almost comical. 

Winchester #2 was the first to speak.

“What the fuck are you here for? Is that a knife?” Winchester #2 laughed quietly. He took out his own and let the glinting metal reflect in the other man’s eyes. 

“You’re Winchester aren’t you?” Winchester #1 said. 

It was too dark for them to see each other, but at their core, all hunters carried themselves the same way. It was in the light of the eyes. 

“Salient observation.” Winchester #2 grinned crookedly. “I’m getting paid to make this kill, so if you could, I don’t know, fucking back off?” 

“There’s a kitsune in there I need to talk to.” Winchester #1 breathed in the dark silence.

An arc of neon yellow hit Winchester #2 right in the teeth. They still looked glaringly white. “Get in line.” He mocked.

Winchester #1 nodded to the bar across the street. “Do you mind if we talk?” 

Winchester #2’s smile was nothing but sharp teeth.

-x-

“She’s dropping bodies, man.” Dean knocked back another shot of whiskey. “Which means we gotta drop her.” 

They’d been at the bar ten minutes and Dean was in 5 shots, while Sam was still at… a zero-sum.

Sam with his marked-up skin and dull brown eyes and sad little line of a mouth. Dean with his nice hair and his bright green eyes and his million-watt smile.

“I’m sorry. Can I ask you a question?” Sam turned around and Dean was surprised when he saw accusation instead of downturned eyebrows. “Don’t you get paid to murder?” Sam hissed.

“Hey, don’t call it murder. Don’t degrade the job. You do it too.” Dean quirked his lips up, half a smile on his face. 

Sam seethed.

Dean liked seeing the other Winchester riled up as if he was some righteous man who was exempt from the consequences of what he did. In a way, he was. The way other people saw you didn’t matter. In a land without heaven or hell, you can only judge yourself.

“Maybe we should go for a drive,” Sam said between gritted teeth.

“I’d be happy to.” Dean dropped a hundred dollar bill on the counter and got up, following Sam out of the bar. It was childish but effective. The younger Winchester trembled behind him with some strange emotion.

Dean took one look at Sam’s parked Nissan Versa then wrinkled his nose. “We aren’t riding in that shitmobile.”

Sam said nothing, only followed Dean reluctantly to the Impala.

“Sammy, you’re not seeing it like we do,” Dean said as he backed out of his parking spot and merged back onto the highway. 

“It’s Sam. Fuck off with the Sammy. Who’s we?”

“Every other hunter, Samuel,” Dean said casually, eyes twinkling. “If you don’t kill them, they’ll kill someone else. In fact, they usually end up killing thrice the people you’ll ever kill.” 

Thrice. Dean liked that word. Everything evil came in multiples of three.

“I’ve heard about the way you torture them before your end their lives.” 

“So it’s a them?” Dean felt the need to snicker.

“Excuse me?” Sam was getting more and more agitated. 

Whatever gentle nature Dean had thought he’d heard about or seen was quickly dipping behind a layer of deep-set anger. He just couldn’t figure out at what. 

“We don’t all get off on killing the way you do.” Sam snapped.

That one cut him deeper than he’d liked.

“I could lay down monsters like I worked in a euthanasia clinic all live long day, and it wouldn’t matter.” Dean’s voice rose to match. “You’re taking a life. You are judge, jury, and executioner. You seem like the type to pray, do you pray?” 

When there was no response, he turned to look at Sam.

Sam just stared ahead, the grey headlights of other cars passing spots over him, making him dance in and out of Dean’s vision like a fading mirage. 

“I’m taking that as a yes, now, do you see your issue?” Dean stepped on the gas, swerved in front of and behind cars. “If hell’s real, we’re damned to it the day we drain the blood from a kitsune's heart, the day we make a vampire’s head topple off its body. I’m not going to spend a life of killing feeling like I’m dying, Might as well make it sport, huh?”

“Stop the car.” Sam looked nauseous, eyes almost bulging out of his head. His skin was a rancid green shade and it definitely wasn’t a shadow cast by the lights.

“I’m just saying if the truth hurts this much, then maybe you didn’t know what you were getting into-” Dean shrugged half-heartedly.

“Stop the fucking car!” Sam shouted, and Dean instantly swerved onto the side of the road. Sam opened the door with a creak and tumbled out, grey eyes empty as he slammed the door.

Dean rolled down the window. “Come on, get back in.”

No answer.

“You don’t have a car, man.” Dean supplied.

“I’ll walk,” Sam said numbly, his legs stiff as he turned back the way they’d come.

Dean’s face switched to concern for a split-second, but then he just shrugged and turned on the radio. 

Finding out who you truly were was inevitable, so Dean had always thought it best to only think of yourself the way you wanted to. He was tempted to watch Sam trudge back to the bar. Something about the abstract picture of misery.

Instead, he just drove forward.

**6.**

“You’re dad needs to recover from the Vetala.” Sam threw more kindling into a crackling fire. 

“Don’t you?” Krissy Chambers asked.

Sam pressed a palm to his pulsing neck, but it didn’t come away red like it had a few hours ago. The bandages were hard with dried blood. “I’ll be fine. Come on,” He watched the grey of the smoke blend with the grey of the sky. “We should do this before you have to go,” 

He didn’t say before he had to go. Before it, all went black and it became too late to save someone else. 

“You hold the knife,” He said to her, “Like this,” Pressed the jagged tip against his own throat.

Krissy mimicked the movement with her blade but didn’t press the knife down. “That’ll bleed it out fast?” 

“If you do it right, it should. Here-” Sam knelt and leaned back. “Try it on me,”

Krissy looked uncomfortable, but Sam knew her. She’d take any opportunity to learn. She took his jaw with one hand and pulled it back, then pressed the knife to his neck with the other, applying pressure at an angle. She did it almost too well.

“Like that?” She asked.

Sam wanted to tell her she didn’t know what she was doing, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie.

He felt a minute trickle of blood begin to wind down his neck. Briefly, his skin crackled and he saw flashes of golden lighting reflected in Krissy’s eyes. He scrambled up and snatched the knife from her hand, stepping away. 

Her eyes were full of that inevitable fear.

“That’s not- That shouldn’t be possible.” She looked how they all did when they found out. Terrified. “Why does that happen?” 

He hesitated.

“Every creature’s some kind of demon, right?” He stared hard at the blade in his hand, eyes watering from the flames. “When you kill, I guess you turn into one too.”

If he was a demon, he wondered what Dean Winchester was.

Krissy was thirteen. He shouldn’t be telling her things she didn’t need to know.

Sam’s mouth stayed open as if he was going to say something else. It was like his body wanted him to admit the cravings to take a life always lingered, but he pressed his mouth into a thin line. If he didn’t think about it, it wouldn’t be true, that was the rule.

“I’ve never met a demon though, so it might just be me.” His attempt at a laugh came out like the crackle of static, so he just shut up and weakly wiped at the blood trickling down his neck. 

“Oh.” Krissy nodded as if she understood. She probably thought she did, Sam didn’t think she ever would.

“Krissy, I’m just teaching you self-defense, I don’t-” Sam searched for the words. “You don’t need to go hunting. There are enough people taking care of that.” 

She nodded, quickly and quietly, then turned away from the burning fire, her back to him.

**7.**

“Don’t turn around Bradley,” Sam said.

Bradley, who wasn’t entirely Bradley anymore, was whistling through his nose. It was off-putting to Sam. Every monster he’d had to kill hadn’t wanted to die. Sam switched his gun to another hand and rubbed at his eyes with his palm. Lack of sleep was making him unusually slow.

“There’s always something beyond, I-” He started.

“You what?” Bradley sounded bored. “Promise?” He reached up and grabbed Sam’s wrist from behind him, pressing the gun further into his skull. “Don’t you ever get tired of giving the same ol’ speech? Death isn’t the end, you will be okay no matter what, blah, blah, blah. Come on, let’s have a real fight, I’ll even let you kill me in the end, how does that sound?”

Sam flinched at all that he knew. It meant he’d been slow to cover his tracks.

Bradley Price was a shape-shifter who made his living off of petty theft. It wouldn’t have been a problem if Bradley hadn’t murdered someone each time he stole, racking up the bodies to an unnerving total of nineteen. Sam didn’t see another way out for either of them.

“Bradley, please.” Sam could barely hear himself talk over the sound of the bugs jittering inside him. They’d finally made their way up to his neck and into his skull. Visibility was nearing zero with the speed of a bullet, a bullet he had yet to dispense. “This isn’t meant to be some horrible thing.” 

Then stop treating it like it is, his veins seemed to hum. Take him up on the offer. Fight the man. See if you’re really worth it.

If Sam had to, he could have Bobby find someone to finish the job for him, but he knew exactly what would happen if he sounded an alarm. Hunters would find out about Bradley’s crimes, then gang up on him and find Dean Winchester-esque ways to kill him.

In a way, Sam was offering protection.

“I’m sorry, you’re right,” Bradley smiled placatingly. “I guess dying is the only good thing to happen when you spend your whole life being someone else.” 

You would know, like bugs out of the grave, his veins hummed with laughter. 

Sam pulled the gun away, Bradley pushed it back.

“I’ll die me right?” Bradley chuckled, then his tone went dark. “What are you scared of?” 

Sam stared at the grey carpet below him, a drop of sweat jumping off his temple. 

How did you tell a monster you were scared that you were killing them your kind?

“Kid?”

“Bradley,” Sam clicked off the safety. He pulled the trigger and refused to watch as brain matter went flying onto the tarp spread out in front of them. For a second, everything was clear. No more bugs, or dust, or nausea or awful ringing in his ears. The relief was built on a false promise, though.

The feelings always came back.

**8.**

“Kinda funny, huh? He never chooses his victims. It’s always him getting commissioned by some mysterious buyer.” Bela giggled into the phone and raised her eyebrows at Dean. She pointed at her phone from where she sat on the window-sill and mouthed something that Dean didn’t even try and decipher. She was trying to pitch his work to a few interested parties, but he wanted money and he wanted it now.

He tried sending a smile her way then turned back to his laptop, fingers poised over the keys. He was on a well-known hunter forum looking for new jobs now that Bela had tied up all her loose ends. Hunters were always angry when he asked for pay, complained that they did it for the good of people. Everyone had a different MO, and he found it hard to give a shit. The only one he hadn’t quite figured out had been the other Winchester.

His mind briefly bounced back to Sam’s vacant eyes the night they’d met outside of the bar. 

That night, he’d turned back to the motel, jogged up the stairs, and waited with uncharacteristic patience for something, anything to move. React, even. Characteristically, he was tempted. Uncharacteristically, he was tempted to scream for someone to find him and stop the coming bloodshed. It wasn’t likely to happen. At three in the morning, in a shithole like this, the chances of anyone decent being out weren’t high. When his fingers brushed over the faded gold door-knob, he remembered his employer’s obstinate demands. 

The bloodier the better.

It had been bloodier, mostly because there had been two of them, a mother and her child. As soon as Dean saw them, he thought they’d looked unwell, like starving strays that lived in wet alleys and didn’t even get scraps to eat. It crossed his mind that he was doing them a favor by finally killing the lights.

A ping from Dean’s computer snapped him back to the present.

SingersScraps: Nest of vampires in Kansas. At least a dozen.

Dean had met Bobby Singer a few times over the years, back when he used to hunt in groups or pairs and never for money. Since then, he’d trusted the old man to give him any tips or support he needed regarding hunts.

Impala’67: Anyone put up any offers? 

SingersScraps: Not that I know of, but they’re moving fast. Maybe you can snag something if they don’t tear you to shreds.

Dean laughed, but his face felt expressionless. 

The sounds of Dean closing his laptop and Bela snapping her phone shut converged.

“Bela, I gotta go.” 

“What for? We just got here,” Bela whined. “We were gonna mini-golf, you promised.”

“Yeah, but I gotta pay my bills.” Dean started packing all his things up.

“You don’t even have bills.” She pointed out. “If you loved me, you’d stay.”

“Don’t call this love.” Dean pecked her on the cheek on his way out.

It was fun, pretending he was in a real relationship that meant something more. It was fun, pretending he was the best hunter he knew, the only one who had the guts to finish the job. It was fun, pretending he knew what waited when everything was gone.

It was fun, pretending.

-x-

There was an outlook off the highway that looked out to half of Kansas; the light strip, the little pinpricks of homes and buildings, the flashing lights of clubs downtown.

There, Dean Winchester found Sam Winchester.

“Sammy!”

The younger man was sitting on the hood of his Nissan and when he heard his name he turned to Dean with a disgruntled look even Dean could see in the dark.

Dean grabbed his brown paper bag and ambled over to Sam, a laugh crinkling his features like wax paper. He plopped down next to Sam, eyes hooked on the light strip. Considering how drunk he was, it was surprising he’d made it to the outlook in one piece.   
  
“Sammy, how’s it been?”

“It’s-” Sam cocked his head, reconsidered the coming reprimand. “Are you drunk? Are you usually drunk when you kill people? It would explain a lot.” His words were marred with a fine tremble. 

“Aren’t you?” Dean asked.

He turned to Sam for a second, taking him in. It was too dark to see him, but he had a feeling Sam from last month would have asked with a little incredulity. This Sam looked like he’d just been tweaking. 

“Ha. Ha ha ha.” Dean laughed his drunk little laugh, making sure to pronounce every sound separately. “The fuck are you on?”

“Nothing, but I’d appreciate it if you could give me some of whatever that is.” Sam pointed at the brown bag.

“Sure, man. Drink it all, if you’d like.” Dean pushed the bag over. 

Sam took a long swig just as Dean toppled off the hood of the car and onto the grass.

“I asked if you’re usually drunk on the job.” 

“No.” Dean lied. He thought the stars looked nice from where he was sprawled on the ground. “I just have a feeling about this one. How big’s the nest?” He asked, pulling himself to his knees.

“Big.” Sam took another swig. 

“How are you planning on killing them all?” 

“I rigged the sprin-” Sam was downing the bottle. “It doesn’t matter.”

Dean raised his eyebrows but kept quiet for a few minutes.

“You got any holdups on this one? We kill them, and we get out of there. No time for your little pre-death nursery rhyme.” Dean said. “I want-”, a burp erupted from his mouth, “I want my cash.”   
He’d heard the rumors, he’d been willing to collaborate per Bobby’s request and Sam’s promise that he’d be the one to keep all the pay, he’d been tolerant. Promising a better tomorrow to killers was were he crossed the line.  
  
Sam stood on his feet and threw the bottle off the outlook. They both heard it shatter, but the sound felt a whole universe away.

It felt like some sort of end, but then again Dean hadn’t been this drunk in a long time.

“No hold-ups.” Sam pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes like he wanted to blind himself. “None.” 

**9.**  
Sam thought the feeling of blood sprinkling from the warehouse ceiling would be alarming enough, but now he just felt… light. Maybe he had spaced, had a little too much to drink, lost too much blood. After so long, maybe it was enough to go numb.

He heard the shuffle of feet, the sound of rope being pulled taut against skin, the shrill screams of the dying. Blood sprinkled around him, on him. Dean was somewhere, his manic laugh vibrating Sam’s bones.

Sam pointlessly wiped his machete on his jeans and looked for Dean in the chaos.

Dean jogged down a set of stairs, the sound of clanging metal melting in with the rhythmic spritz of the sprinklers. 

Blood still fell like rain.

“How many left?” He asked quietly, his gaze fixed on the puddles of congealing blood beneath his feet. His shoes were gummy with it.

“I’m done. I think we did it,” Dean wiped his mouth, spreading blood around his cheeks. It was impossible to tell what was his and what came from above. “I think we killed them all.”

“We should go,” Sam closed his eyes, counted down from ten. His vision was clear in a way it never was, his hands steady and his mouth set in something he knew resembled a smile. It’d only be for a few hours, and he knew his window was closing.

They walked out of the warehouse and stood in the dark. Sam’s heart hammered in a way it rarely ever did, and when he looked at Dean all bloody and battered he felt it skip a beat at the idea that he looked the same.

“Alright, I’m gonna... “ Dean violently swerved and threw up into the bushes. He stood up and lurched to the side, hands up to the sky as if he was waiting for something. Nothing ever came, so instead, he turned around. “I need more alcohol. Maybe I can find someone to fuck. I’ll-I’ll be back” 

Sam didn’t mention the fact that they were both soaked in blood that wasn’t theirs, hands dirty and skin ripped open. Every slow drop of blood that rolled down from Dean’s hair looked like a bug crawling out from somewhere under his skull.

“Sam?” Dean asked.

He should have been tentative to answer. Everything seemed to be moving too fast. “Yeah?” 

“Red looks good on you.” It didn’t seem like it was supposed to be a joke.

Sam didn’t say anything and just watched as Dean ambled down the road. He briefly thought about the chances that Dean would get flattened by an oncoming car but he’d made it to the outlook alright, so Sam figured it didn’t matter.

Once Dean was gone, Sam stepped back inside, something in him eager to survey the damage they’d done. His steps were slow but his brain was working overtime, trying to take everything in. Bodies were strewn across the room, laying at odd shapes and angles. Pieces of people were here and there, things crunched jarringly underfoot. 

Someone snickered. 

Weak and sputtering, but still a snicker.

Sam tiptoed to the noise, his feet squelching every time they separated from the ground. The sound came from a vampire that was, incredibly, still alive. They lay splayed out against a window sill. Sam couldn’t see much of anything about them, only the way their chest still rose and fell. His veins screamed in his skin. They moved him forward, urged his hand to pull the jagged knife out from his waistband. 

He recalled the feeling of blood splattering against his skin, bones snapping under his hands. His veins hummed, and for once, he listened.

“You…” The voice was a hitch in the silence. It didn’t even look like the vampire was moving its mouth. Sam blinked as he got closer, blood and sweat sliding into his eyes. 

“Winchester…” The cackle that followed quickly turned into a wet gurgle. 

“You’ve created a sense of control for yourself haven’t you?” The vampire wiped weakly at the blood dribbling out of their mouth. “By being the nice guy, you’re not really hurting anyone.” They laughed lightly, blood spurting out of their mouth as an accompaniment. It splattered Sam across the face, got in his mouth.

He should have spat it out, but something told him to swallow it down.

“You are as good as all of us.” The vampire’s fingers trembled, and Sam was suddenly afraid to look down at his own. “You’re as good as dead.”

Sam’s eye twitched. “Would you rather have me kill you, or should I find the other Winchester and send him?” He whispered, shooting out his hand to grip at their jacket. His patience was running out. His patience used to be eternal.

“You don’t get it.” A cackle from the vampire, a cackle coming from deep inside him.

Sam knelt until he was right in its face. “What is it, exactly, that I’m not understanding?”

Every time they breathed little flecks of blood jumped up onto his cheeks, dotted him like freckles.

“I don’t give a fuck how you kill me because, in the end, it’s all the same. You’re still killing me, aren’t you? You carry yourself like you’re carrying all of us. At least the other one doesn’t pretend he’s doing you a favor.” The voice rose, the hum was turning into a violent and visceral song.

He felt sweat dripping down his temples, clearing trails through the blood. A millipede, it’s thousands of legs pitter-pattering on his forehead, down the back of his neck. Everything pulsed in time with his heart, the way it thrummed uncontrollably.

If he just-

He would feel better-

It would be the right thing to do-

He shot forward and the knife was in the vampire’s gut, hand finally steady. 

There was a moment of clarity, there always was, there was a moment of pain, there always had to be.

“Oh, wait.” A knife ground against bone. “You actually thought you were-” 

The vampire just did not want to die.

“You meet someone like Dean Winchester and you think,” Sam’s eyes were getting too bright. The gore didn’t make him feel dirty. “How can someone like him not be tainted? How can someone like him feel so completely whole? I guess… I guess it was just me all along, which means I’ve been wrong my whole life.” He cocked his head. Images flickered through his head. A whole life wasted.

“I’m sorry.” Sam’s voice rang clear. “I can’t let you live.” 

Sam pulled out the knife from their abdomen and jammed it in their throat. Vaguely, he remembered Krissy Chambers making him bleed. The body twitched for a few seconds, spasmed, then lay still.

He thought he finally understood the infection. 

The window was up. 

**10\. **

One moment Dean was getting blown in a bathroom, the next he was back at the outlook.

He didn’t remember making it back to the warehouse, but it was light out by the time he did. Blood stuck to his hair and his eyelashes and his clothes, but a gut feeling was what made it hard to move.

He’d killed, and he’d always come out clean. There was a difference between choosing to forget and not remembering, and that scared him more than anything.

The warehouse was a Jackson Pollock of reds and muted grey, the trail leading back to the open doors a streak of black. He got tunnel vision until he saw Sam.

Sam sitting shirtless in the middle of the bloodbath, cloth bunched up in his hand. It was stained from where he’d tried to wipe the blood off of himself, the uneven streaks across his face and chest unnervingly close to looking like cuts.

“Sam? What- What’s going on, man?” Dean tried to keep his voice clear. “I thought we were done.”

“I have these bugs.” Sam stared in morbid fascination as a bead of sweat rolled down his ribs. “They show up every time I kill someone.” 

Dean snickered, “Just stomp them out.” He didn’t mean to laugh. No part of the current situation was... funny. 

“You don’t think,” Sam turned his forearms over. “I’ve tried?” His arms were… Dean couldn’t even tell what he’d done to them. He didn’t really have much hair left either, his scalp covered with knicks and scratches from a cheap razor. Most of his skin was covered in scabs and bruises and marks as if he’d been trying to dig, punch, get something out.

“They won’t go away.” Sam broke into a little smile, eyes empty. “Ever felt like things were crawling on you and then in you?” 

Dean started to shake his head, but then instinct had him slapping the back of his neck. It felt like something was crawling down his skin. He pulled his hand away and saw nothing, no crushed bug carcass or smear of blood. 

“Sam,” Dean looked around them. It was fucking terrifying. Bodies, blood, bones, a Jackson Pollock of pieces of parts of people.

The air suddenly felt heavy, the blood on Dean’s skin unfamiliar and tacky like glue. This wasn’t killing. This had never been what killing felt like for him. 

“Dean, they’re everywhere, don’t you get it? Day one, and you’ve screwed yourself over,” Sam pleaded gently.

“Stop,” Dean stepped back from the mess, from the man, from the massacre. “Please, stop talking,” 

He backed up until he hit something with a thud. Dean whipped around and saw purple feet, bloated figures hanging from rafters. He choked back vomit.

“It’s fine. You’ll be fine.” Sam got up slowly, let the cloth of his shirt fall onto the floor, leathery chunks of something dropping down with it. Now he saw what he’d been covering. Sam’s hands were neon red slabs of tendon and bone. He’d skinned himself.

Dean tried to breathe. Someone had taught him that once.

“I just-” Sam scrubbed a hand numbly down his jaw, things peeling further apart at the contact. “I finally figured it out. We’re the same.”

“No, no we aren’t.” Dean fumbled for his gun. Sam was dead on his feet or dying, but he only sounded tired.

“You said it yourself. You weren’t willing to spend a life of killing feeling like you were dying. I was,” Sam’s breath hitched, and he stopped walking. He tried to take another step before he decided he couldn’t anymore. “I was picking myself apart.”

“You don’t need to worry, I’ve got it. Get out of here,” Sam sagged back to the floor, pulled his phone out of his pocket with slick hands. “I’ll call once your gone.” He seemed lucid, for a moment.

“Sam?”

He looked up at Dean, opened his eyes for what felt like the last time. 

“Dean, we can try, but we’ll never change.”

**11\. **

He drove to whatever dingy motel would be home that day.

His veins hummed thinly, whispering a quiet song.


End file.
